You can Run, but you can’t Hide / The boxer Joe Louis, 1914-81 | Photos by Carl Van Vechten, 1941
‘I was born in a sharecropper’s tumbledown shack on a dirt road in Alabama, on May 13th 1914.
Later, I was a Depression kid in the Detroit slums.
Whenever I could, I earned a few cents after school by working on an ice truck.
I toted 75lbs chunks of ice three or four floors up.
Nights I hung out at the corner with the Catherine Street boys. Most all they ever
talked about was how much the big fighters took home in their purses.
I had just started to take violin lessons, and one of the gang showed me that
Kid Chocolate and Jack Dempsey made more money in one fight than a good fiddler
could make in a couple of lifetimes.’
“A champion doesn’t become a champion in the ring, he’s merely recognized
in the ring. His “becoming” happens during his daily routine.”
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”
“You need a lot of different types of people to make the world better.”
“There is no such thing as a natural boxer. A natural dancer has to practice hard.
A natural painter has to paint all the time. Even a natural fool has to work at it.”
“He can run, but he can’t hide.”
“If you gotta tell them who you are, you ain’t nobody.”
make you a fighter. That comes from inside, and it’s something no one else can ever give you.”
